Lately I’ve been trying to come up with new cooking ideas for meals that are delicious, cheap, and very healthy. Usually, you can only have two out of those three at a time. Recently I boasted that the next day I would make a delicious soup…however, unbeknownst to me, all of the vegetables and other soup-related ingredients had already been devoured by one hungry Adam. The only known entity was a small quantity of meatballs. This was going to be a sad soup indeed… pretty much just a few meatballs in a pot of water! I was very discouraged, but I began adding random ingredients and eventually a hearty, delicious stew coalesced.

For the broth, I used water, vegetable juice, rice vinegar, a splash of red wine, liberal quantities of Sriracha sauce, lemon juice, cornmeal, garlic, and salt and pepper. I added tofu, rice noodles, a little spinach, black beans, and meatballs. It was delicious, healthy, and filling, and the whole thing probably cost around $3 to make. A success!

Stew!

It’s finally finished! I knit a super awesome lace hooded capelet. I thought the hard part was over when I finished knitting it, but writing up the pattern took just as long! I used 6 balls of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Hollyberry. It was originally earmarked for some sort of giant scarf to wrap around my head when it’s uber cold, but I quickly realized that was a time-consuming and unsightly solution for a simple problem, so I decided to make a capelet instead…

The pattern is available for $4.00 in the shop:

Pattern link
Ravelry link

I had been craving sandwiches with spicy mustard all day, but not possessing any bread, I decided to make crepes!

I used the Basic Crepes Recipe from Allrecipes.com, substituting almond milk for regular milk as it was what I had on hand, and adding in a tiny bit of nutmeg, black pepper, and dill. The crepes were filled with shredded grilled chicken, baby spinach, diced apples, goat cheese, and sweet hot mustard. We had the crepes with an unfiltered apricot wheat ale, but they would also have paired well with a nice sauvignon blanc. Delicious!

I also made… cupcakes?

Just kidding! My awesome new beading supplies came in the mail.

Fear not, the green is only food coloring. Bombay Sapphire martinis… stirred.
Relevancy: Secret Project has become my ENEMY! It has caused my required level of martini consumption to increase tenfold. Production is delayed because mathematical elegance does not always translate well to a flawed and imperfect material world.

tl;dr: Good pattern writing practices don’t usually involve arbitrary decisions.

I have been working on other small projects in the meantime. My friend Chris asked me to make him a pair of fingerless gloves in purple and black with accents of “the brightest pink I could make,” and mentioned that something somewhat psychedelic would be cool. Shortly thereafter I had a dream that involved neon pink eyes in the trees and yellow 80’s-style lasers. Thus… pink eyes on the palms of the hands. And since my gloves give you super powers, when you wear this pair, you can shoot lasers out of your hands. The pink yarn was made from many different shades of hot pink, hand-carded together. It practically glows.

I’m also in love with these. They were supposed to be a commission, but I’ve lost contact with the person who requested them, so I may either sell them or keep them for myself. The yellow/green yarn is one of my favorite yarns that I’ve ever dyed/spun. I think I’d been holding onto it for about 6 years!

Launching one of the model rockets on the Vegas trip. That’s me doing the countdown. I got to push the big red button:

Art.